


Remembered Pleasures

by telanaris



Series: Arcana One-Shots [14]
Category: The Arcana (Visual Novel)
Genre: Blow Job, Cunnilingus, Gen, PWP, Praise Kink, Vaginal Sex, smut with feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-03
Updated: 2018-07-03
Packaged: 2019-06-01 16:22:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15147050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/telanaris/pseuds/telanaris
Summary: You used to bring Julian rose petals from your garden, to sweeten the air inside his medical mask.You remember the way he smiled—bashful, brilliant, sweet—when you started to simply bring him roses instead.- - - - - - -A very, very NSFW take on the reunion with Julian in Book XIII. Smut with lots of FeelingsTM





	Remembered Pleasures

**Author's Note:**

> (Please note that no gendered pronouns are used to refer to the reader, but cis female anatomy is described.)

****“You're alive, _you're alive_ —”

Your hands roam across his body, touching whatever you can reach. You had believed in him. Even in the Hanged Man's realm, before you learned of your shared past, you had _believed_ in him. ' _Between the devil and the deep blue sea_ ,' he'd said, but still you'd believed that he'd choose life. Choose you.

But faith is one thing in the abstract, and to have it rewarded is quite another thing entirely. In the star-studded realm where you'd met him, embracing on an island of moondust you'd seen— _dreamed?_ —of a life with him you'd both thought was impossible. Days of laughter and adventure. Warm nights. Never having to doubt again, never having to feel alone.

You will have to work for it, of course. Lucio’s return is imminent, and the plague is coming with him. But you have learned that often the best things in life are worth striving for, and a life with Julian, after all of this is over, must certainly qualify as one of those best things, most wonderful things.

‘ _I want a life with you_ ,’ he'd said. ‘ _I'll do whatever it takes to make that happen_.’

And so will you.

For now, though, he's back—he's _alive_ —and no matter what tomorrow brings, all you really want to do is celebrate that simple, impossible, beautiful fact.

Julian seems to have similar ideas on his mind. “Are you sure?” he asks you, brow waggling. “Don't you want to check?”

But what you want is not a question—it’s not even up for debate. He is alive, he has _come back to you_... before anything else, before chasing down Lucio, he deserves to be rewarded. Welcomed back to this world, and to you, as best as you know how.

When you kiss him, the kiss is hungry, desperate, fierce; his answering moan lasts only as long as it takes for him to part your lips and lick his way into your mouth.

“Closer,” he keens, a firm hand on the small of your back, holding you flush against him as he pulls you  towards the table behind him. “Quick, come here—”

Julian lifts himself onto the table behind him, and—impatient—he hoists you into his lap, dragging you onto the table with him. Your legs part, come to a rest on either side of his thighs, but even this closeness is not enough to satisfy him. “Good, yes, closer—”

Tools and jars go clattering off the table’s edge, shattering when they meet the floor as Julian pulls you on top of him. You pay those wretched instruments no mind. Julian's weight beneath you is solid, his body warm, and his mouth, _oh_ … already red with the ferocity of your kiss, lips glistening, curled into a grin you've never seen him wear before. It holds none of the shadows that have eclipsed his other smiles: fear, guilt, regret. It is only bright. Only joy.

What else are you supposed to do in the face of that smile, but kiss him again?

Julian groans into this second kiss, and pressed so flush against him you can feel the way the sound fills his lungs, shakes his chest. His hands are restless, like he cannot decide which part of you he most wants to touch. His fingers splay across your shoulders, trail down your back, squeeze your thighs... but always return to your waist, pulling you close, unwilling to tolerate even the slightest distance coming between you.

You feel just as eager, though your affections are a bit more purposeful. He has come back to you—he deserves to be rewarded. And after all the time you've spent together these last few days, you know just how to do it—you know, by now, how he likes to be touched.

Your hands smooth up his forearms and across his shoulders, tangling in the red curls at the nape of his neck. Once wound, they pull—just a tug—not enough to wrench his head back, but enough to make him gasp with delight.

After all, you do not want to be overly rough with him. He has given up the Hanged Man's boon to return ( _to you_ ) and any mark you leave upon him will stay until it heals as everyone else heals—slowly, in the natural course of things. It will be a tightrope walk, learning his new limits. How to please him without pushing him into unnecessary pain.

It is an adventure you are admittedly much looking forward to, but it is not one you will embark on just yet. Tonight, you tug at his hair only enough to sting as you guide his head backwards, tilting his face towards the ceiling, exposing the beautiful column of his throat... fresh skin, rosy with a blush of arousal. Your mouth finds the pulse point where he so loves to be teased and you take the skin between your teeth.

The cry of pleasure he makes echoes in the high-vaulted ceiling of the laboratory—you will transform this dreary pit, fill this place that has only known darkness and death with life, pleasure, new beginnings. You wonder, idly, if Portia will find her way back down here after she's finished beating Valdemar to a pulp... but you are only slightly shocked to realize you don't care. Julian's resurrection, and all you have learned in the Hanged Man's realm (the truth of your past, and how long you have loved him, _missed_ him) make it so that you no longer have the good sense, or the patience, to wait to have him any longer.

(No matter. You'll make it up to Portia somehow.)

Beneath you, Julian trembles with excitement His breath shudders in your ear as your teeth work slowly down the muscle of his throat, and his hands trail slowly—timidly—down your back, before they come to hover just above the curve of your ass.

And it makes you smile so hard, you have to choice but to stop kissing him. _This man!_ Utterly unashamed when it comes to indulging in his own fantasies of control and restraint—a thrill runs through you at the memory of him, entangled in vines and exposed, craving your touch—but so bashful when it comes to giving in return, as if there is still a part of him that can't quite believe his advances will be accepted. As though you would ever recoil from his touch, reject his affection!

“It's okay,” you breath against the shell of his ear, and the warmth of your breath against him sends another quiver running through him. Your fingers give his hair another gentle tug, and your free hand swings around your back to find Julian's, guiding it lower to cup your cheeks. “It's okay, please—I want you, Julian. Right here, on this table. I don't want to wait anymore.”

Julian gasps as though he can't quite believe it. “Again,” he begs, his hands finally lowering and giving your ass a firm squeeze. “Say it again, tell me again—”

“I want you,” you repeat, your fingers coming to his chest, nails raking against his skin as they trail down his torso, the skin so blessedly untouched by Valdemar's scalpel. “I want you inside of me, I want to feel you, I want to make you come—”

The sound Julian makes then can only be described as desperate, and he uses the considerable grip he has on you to pull you close, pressing your hips to his lap and burying his face in your neck. But there's more explicit indications of the impact your words have had on him: between your legs, you can feel his cock straining against the seam of his pants, seeking your heat.

You can't help the breathless laugh that escapes you, then. _That_ part of him, at least, is very much alive.

You bring your hands to his shoulders, adjusting your grip so you can lean back and look into his face, meet his grey eyes with yours as you grind your hips slowly against his.

The eye contact is brief—Julian's squeeze shut at the drag of your heat against him. He pants, lost in his own lust, guiding your hips as they roll against his. His grip is firm. And as much as you're doing this to encourage him, to rile him up, you can't help the ragged gasp that escapes you when the hardness of his cock brushes your sex _just_ so, a delicious friction that has no right to be nearly as gratifying as it is, the touch blunted by all the clothing yet between you. Your grip on his shoulders tightens; you press yourself to him, spreading your legs wider, sprawling over him as you seek more of that intensity, a hunger that spoils into a warm pool of heat in the cradle of your hips and leaves your thighs tight, trembling—

"Wait, wait! Just—wait..."

Frantic, frenzied, Julian pushes you away from him. Not wholly—you're still perched in his lap—but far enough so that you're hovering over his thighs rather than his waist, and you can look one another in the face.

And Julian looks… nervous. He's got that anxious smile he wears when he's on the edge of a confession, and his hands—which have come to rest on the rise of your thighs—tap an uneven rhythm against your skin. He's breathing hard, breathless from kissing, and your eyes trace the line of his throat down to his chest. He is… _so_ beautiful. It always overwhelms you, but now more than ever, so close to an embrace you have long craved; your eyes follow the hairs that trail down his navel, past the band of his trousers.....

But, “Before we do this,” Julian says, and your gaze snaps back to his face, “I, uh... I have to tell you something. You deserve to know. _Should_ know, if we, ahhh….”

He gnaws nervously at his lip, his eyes cast somewhere in his lap, unable to meet your eyes. “If you really want me,” he says, finally, “then you deserve to know this… it would not be the first time. For us.”

You settle your weight with a smile, reaching out to take his chin in your hand, tilting his head up to meet your gaze. “I know, Julian.”

His eyes widen in surprise—and they are so lovely, silvery like sunlight flashing on a swift stream. Even mismatched as they are you adore them.

“Whaaaa—you—you, uh, know what, exactly?”

“I was there with you, in the Hanged Man's realm. You couldn't see me, but I heard you. And I remember, now.” You lift your hands to frame his face, stroking his cheekbones with your thumbs. “I remember everything.”

You can remember the smell of the clinic, rose laid over camphor over antiseptic over sickness. You remember walking across the city, unlocking the doors every morning before Julian arrived—always exhausted, always over-caffeinated. You remember being by his side as you cared for the sick and the dying, gleaning what knowledge you could from their final days, providing them what comfort you were able to ease their passage.

You used to bring Julian rose petals from your garden, to sweeten the air inside his medical mask.

You remember the way he smiled—bashful, brilliant, sweet—when you started to simply bring him roses instead.

‘ _Things are dark right now_ ,’ you'd told him, noting that same darkness in the shadows under his eyes that had only deepened since you'd met. ‘ _But there's beauty, too. You just have to look for it_.’

Those days life seemed so precious—so short. When you first kissed him the taste of sweet liquor on his tongue had made you dizzy and he had held you so tightly and you had thought, even then, that you wanted nothing more than to spend the rest of your life kissing him—though in those days, you hardly expected ' _the rest of your life_ ' to be very long.

And, over time, what once had started as a purely physical relationship, meant to bring some small comfort to the both of you in all that death, had gradually grown to something more. Something you never dared to hope was real. Something the both of you had refused to acknowledge...until it was too late.

(He had only been gone for three days. Three days spent at the palace in desperate research. That was all the time it took for the plague to claim you. And when you had died, you died thinking you would never see Julian again, your greatest regret that you had never told him, really, what he meant to you.

Now, you have been given another chance.)

“You found me again,” you whisper against the shell of his ear. “You came back.”

“ _I_ came back? You came back! Even though,” and Julian’s voice falters, “even though I failed you. Left you, in the end. When I found out, it was already to late—”

“No.” You shake your head—this is no time for that, for stewing in regrets three years stale. “We have both cheated death, only to find each other again, and that is what counts. Impossible odds—but here we are. And whatever happened three years ago holds no sway over my heart—does not change in the least the way I feel about you now. It is… a miracle. A gift.” A smile curls your lips into a grin. “I am not letting you push me away, after all that.”

“No?”

Your answer is quick, firm, certain: “No.”

That is comfort enough to assuage whatever fears Julian still held. He matches your grin with a playful one of his own.

“And how do you plan to stop me, then? Will you... hold me down if necessary?”

“I'll hold you however you like,” you purr, “but I'd like to start with holding you in my mouth.”

“ _Yes_ ,” he hisses. "Bite me again, hold me back with your teeth—oh.”

Julian blinks in surprise, then colors with embarrassment once he understands your meaning. Your fingers are already untying the laces on his trousers, pulling the away the sash from his waist.

“Oh, no, darling—you don't have to—”

"I want to.”

Truthfully you've wanted this for a long time. The chance to taste him. To hear him panting, moaning, _breathless_ , to see if pleasure turns him speechless—or if it doesn't, what it moves his tongue to say instead. Trousers untied, you free his cock from his clothes, wrapping your hand around the shaft and tracing a firm line with your thumb along the underside of the flushed head.

With a wicked grin you ask, “Do you plan to stop me?”

“S-stop you? Darling, I should know better by now. You are a—a gale force wind, a rogue wave— _hah_ —no, I won't stop you, I'll behave, I'll be good—”

“If you are,” you croon, sliding one foot then the other onto the floor in front of Julian, “if you are _very_ good, perhaps you'll be rewarded.”

He keens as your hands find the band of his trousers, sliding them down his thighs. “Oh, god, yes, I'll be good—so good—do whatever you want, whatever you ask.” You can't pull them past his boots—still buckled—but even gathered ‘round his knees, you can see enough of him—thick curve of thighs, cut of his hips—to see the ripple of arousal that radiates from his core and trembles down his legs when he promises to behave for you, echoes anew when you reward this promise with a swipe of your thumb over his slit.

“Mmm.” A thoughtful hum. You reach behind you and pull up a chair to the table. “Then again, you've been so good already, haven't you?”

You dip your head to pucker your lips around him but deliver only this brief kiss—however lewd—before you pull your head out of Julian's lap and it is this—the withholding of pleasure, the teasing, more than the kiss itself—that makes Julian groan, pressing the back of his hand to his mouth as he watches you, though the gesture does little to muffle his pleasure sounds.

“You've been so brave.” But the tone of your voice shifts—this is no game. It is not idle praise, meant to rile him up. It is truth; _gratitude_. Gone is the teasing from your voice—now, it is only reverent.  “So selfless. So strong, Julian. You claim so often you are weak and selfish—the truth is you are the exact opposite of those things.”

Julian's eyes are squeezed shut, but not with pleasure. You think it’s more likely he can’t bear to look at you, like this praise—which is not of his body or his behavior but his very character—is too much, too difficult to hear. But you need him to hear you... to believe you, after what you've both been through.

“Julian. Look at me.”

Julian’s eyes open slowly ( _beautifully_ ) and meet yours.

“You are deserving of every happiness,” you tell him, running your hands along the tops of his thighs. For emphasis you lower your mouth, feel the coarse hairs of his thighs tickle your cheek and taste the salt upon his skin when you kiss his trembling legs. “Of every pleasure I can give you.”

Then, giving him no space to protest, you bring your hands to his knees and widen the spread of his legs, then you lower your mouth onto his cock.

He shudders so hard the table he's sitting on shudders with him, a clatter of wood legs against worn stone. You hold him in place as you work, encouraged by the sounds he makes, which never cease—pleas, plaints, groans—your tongue running along his length, your cheeks hollowing around him, until you take him so fully into him that you can feel him pressing to the back of your throat.

With a gasp and a cry of alarm Julia's fingers wrap around your shoulder and hold you still, hold you back. You pull away, looking up into his face.

He looks...devastated, defiled. The beautiful halo of red hair around his face backlit, a crimson crown that frames and inflames the color in his cheeks, the flush that pinks his neck. His throat is tight, taut with unvoiced pleasure cries, restrained—when he finally finds the sense to string words together, his voice is hoarse—

“Please, please, it's too much—too good—I won't, I _cannot_ last if you go on like that…”

He looks so embarrassed—but it only pleases you to see him so so close to the brink.

“Okay.” You stand and place a hand on his shoulder, pushing him farther back on the table. “Then how would you like to ‘ _go on_ ’?”

The question is rhetorical, its answer clear to you. You know, anyway, what you want, and you’ve made it quite clear. Chasing that coveted feeling of fullness, you slip free of your underwear, climb back into his lap—

“No! Uh, I mean—please…”

You hover over him, lips already pressed to his cock, but this contact does not inspire much reaction from Julian. He too focussed on you, his eyebrows arched, searching for the words—he swallows.

Then, he licks his lips. “First, ahh, before we…” and he leans back on the table, his hands firm on your hips, drawing you over him. “Let me?”

Your heart skips a beat in your chest.

But this is not some idle tryst. This is Julian, whom you love—and love well enough to know he might need to be taught what that means, that affection does not have to be earned and repaid, that it is not a score to settle.

“Do you… do you really want to?” you ask him, quietly. “Just because I… you don’t _have_ to—”

“Oh— _hah_! No, no, it’s not like that.”

By now he’s reclined fully on the table, and from his angle his eyelashes look so _thick_ (he is so damnably, impossibly pretty) as he trails his gaze from your face to the hem of your skirt—to your waist. His cheeks color madly.

When he speaks, he hardly dares raise his voice above a whisper, but even then it is hoarse with longing and desire, making the fact that he does ‘ _really want to_ ’ abundantly clear:

“I can remember,” Julian says, his hands lowering to dip below the hem of your dress, teasing upwards. “What you taste like. How _wet_ —and the smell of you…” he bites his lower lip and draws his breath in through his nose as if he is trying, even at such a distance, to get a whiff of you, before his hands finds your hips again, urging you forward and over his face. “Please, let me?”

The headiness of your earlier game is still upon you—you feel like you should say something witty, sultry, ‘ _well since you asked so nicely_ ,’ that sort of thing—but you’ve been left dumbstruck, speechless. Julian has always been shameless, unafraid to speak his desires aloud but this… the way he describes the memory, how eager he is… it’s one of the hottest things he’s ever said. ‘ _How wet_ ,’ he tells you, and as if spurred by mention alone—encouraged—you can feel yourself slicken between your legs, swelling with want.

You can only nod, weakly, and allow him to guide your legs until you are hovering, poised over his mouth.

Julian surges forward with the same intensity (the same _hunger_ ) as when he reaches for your mouth; you can feel his tongue lick the length of you, curling along your lips, as if to draw as much of your wetness into his mouth as possible. Maybe he succeeds—he _moans_ against you, tightens his grip on your hips and pulls you down, more snugly, against his face, before securing his lips around your clit and sucking.

There is no buildup—no teasing. Only eagerness, insistence… a desire to please. ‘ _I’ll be good_ ’—and he is. Your sighs and whimpers fill the cavernous space that once held Julian’s cries, and the sound of them trembles against the walls, delicate, breathy. It is almost embarrassing how soon he brings you to your own edge, but his tongue is relentless, and he runs it over your clit again, and again, until your legs feel tight, coiled—you can’t help but rock your hips against him, weakly, to meet his mouth, each stroke of his tongue—he doesn’t seem to mind—

“ _Julian_.” It’s a warning, but it’s high-pitched and breathy, and it seems only to encourage him. “Julian, wait—I’m close, I’ll—!”

But instead of slowing down he only holds you fast to him, his arms circling your thighs and clutching them, holding you in place. Heedless of your warning, he quickens the pace of his tongue, curling it around your too-swollen clit and gliding—and when your orgasm hits you, it hits you _hard_ , and everything—the vivisection tables, the offices, the lab itself—recedes and there is nothing, _nothing else_ but the feel of his tongue, his hair tickling your thighs, his fingers digging into the meat of your legs—the ceiling swallows the desperate, broken, plaintive sounds you make—too late, you realize you are fully thrusting up against his face now, the tip of his nose buried against your groin, but Julian only encourages it, guiding each thrust with his own hands to make it faster, harder, _rougher_ , moaning against you once more in approval….

Even when you’re coming down, catching your breath, quivering, he holds you, filling your thighs with peppered kisses, gentle encouragements to ease you through the aftershocks of your own orgasm. But he lets you go without a fight when you lift your leg and drag yourself over him, straddling his stomach.

You let your body sag, shoulders hunched, eyes closed, catching your breath… everything feels…so tingly, so faint. So light.

A satisfied hum from Julian moves you to open your eyes. His chin gleams, but his middle finger drags along the lines of his jaw, the cleft of his chin, gathering up whatever sweetness remains before he slips his finger into his mouth an hollows his cheeks around it, sucking. His eyelids flutter shut, and he groans obscenely around the digit.

Incredibly— _impossibly_ —you feel another thrill of arousal run through you at the sight.

He opens his eyes and meets yours, holds your gaze as he draws the finger out of his mouth. The corners of his eyes wrinkle in a smile as his tongue darts out to lick his lips, before he flashes you his cheekiest grin.

“Just like I remember.”

You manage a weak laugh. Julian laughs along with you, but as the laughter peters out his face transforms into another sultry expression. His hands find your knees, trailing up along your thighs… “So,” he asks, and the casual tone of his voice is not convincing in the least, “…was I as good as _you_  remember?”

And how—how are you supposed to answer _that_? Still so heady and content from the strength of your orgasm you can hardly string sentences together. But if it’s praise he’s looking for, he’ll have it—if not with words, than with actions.

“Come here,” you say, fisting your fingers in the white gauze of his shirt and tugging, “and I’ll show you.”

You are weak—spent, though you suspect that won’t last long—but there are easy ways to reward him. As you pulling Julian upright, you lower your hips along his body, straddling his lap once more. Sitting like this you can feel his erection pressing, wet and insistent, against the inside of your thigh; even this touch of draws a soft groan out of you, eager as you are (even still) to feel the dull press of him inside of you. Not just yet… but while you recover, you have other ways of ravishing Julian. Of teasing him, as he so likes to be teased.

You stare into his eyes, hands still fisted in his shirt—keep him close—as you lower yourself (still slick, mixed spit) over him, gliding along the shaft of his cock but not permitting him entrance.

His hand slams against the table behind him with a smack, bracing himself, holding his weight as he throws his head back and gives up a heady cry to the vaulted ceiling. You bite your lip, holding back a moan of your own—the rub of his cock against your clit, light as it is (the barest of touches) has your spine curving inward, toes curling. Your head falls to the crook of Julian’s shoulder; without so much as a warning, you take the skin between your teeth.

And here, a new fascination: bereft of his mark, when your teeth leave his skin, it purples. ‘ _Give me something to remember you by_ ,’ he’d said, and at the time, you could not—but now, he has come back to you. He is yours. You have every intention of marking him as such.

Two bruises later he’s begging, again. “Please,” he cries, “ _please_ ,” but, “ _be patient_ ,” you tease him, pressing a smile to the skin above his collar, sucking on the third mark, deepening the bruise. He bucks his hips against yours, fruitlessly, succeeding only in slipping his cock between your thighs. But when he tries a second time, you shift your hips just so—he catches—and swift, before he’s realized you’ve relented, you slide yourself onto him fully.

His arms wrap around you, tighter than the vines the Hanged Man’s vines that had claimed you and borne you through the mangroves to his side. He writhes—his head bowing against your shoulder, spine curling against you, receding with the desperate inhale—his hips, seeking what little leverage the table affords him in the position, pressing against yours, as if there’s anything left to give.

“H-hh, hah—” his breath is warm against your collar, fingers splaying across your back. “Oh, you wicked little— _ah_!”

You are only just recovered. Still, your orgasm lingers as a phantom ache in your thighs, your core—you can hardly do more than roll your hips against Julian’s. He is greedy for it, desperate, and he meets each weak roll of your hips with a buck of his own. It sets a sensual pace—you want to look at him. To meet his eyes. _It’s you_ — _you’re alive, you’re alive_ —

Winding your fingers into his hair you pull him away from your shoulder, far enough for you to watch his face contort with pleasure each time a new wave crashes over him. Each wretched gasp, each delirious moan awakens an appetite in you, an old hunger: it is familiar now, all of it. How he fucks, how he wants—begs. But after all this time—the both of you passing unscathed through Death—it’s like you’re seeing it anew.

And perhaps you are. This isn’t the kind of desperate and nihilistic lovemaking you shared when the plague ravaged the city, when the fear—no, the certainty of death was so irrefutable that neither of you dared hope for anything other than that fleeting comfort. Yes, this is different—softer, closer. In those bygone days, whatever you used to feel for him that was not lust you swallowed, smothered. Now, you let those feelings swell within you, a blossoming in your chest—hope.

“You are so beautiful, Julian,” you tell him. “So beautiful like this. Mine, unraveling—”

He cuts your praise short with a moan of encouragement, follows through with a kiss—hungry—and his hands come to your hips, urging them into a pace that is faster, rougher, less steady. He must be close, you think. And something about his desperation—how aroused he is, how frenzied as he approaches his peak—has you at the brink right along with him. In between pleasure sounds a stream of praise and awe tumbles from his lips like a river tumbles over stones:

“—wanted this for so long— _ravished_ , it’s too much, I can’t—”

—dissolving into a warning—an ending, imminent, but you beat him to the finish. Sensitive yet from the earlier attentions of his tongue, now the praise on his lips pulls you over the edge and under a tide of pleasure, a rip current, dragging you out to dark and dangerous depths… but you are safe: all the while, Julian never takes his eyes off you, watching you with open-mouthed awe as you come, and _come_ , and come undone—and you cannot tell whether the high-pitched whine that fights out of him (strangled, strained) is because of the look on your face as your pleasure levels you or from the way your sex clenches around him as that same pleasure echoes through you, a shudder from head to toe.

You are weak, dissolving, but you cup his cheek in your palm: “Come with me,” whispered in the space between you, “come _for_ me, I want to feel it—”

And you are weak, dissolving, but Julian has carried you with ease across half this city—dragged you out of aqueducts, trash cans, pub fights—so he guides your hips with ease against his, half-lifting you out of his lap before he brings you together again, and in this way he tightens—coils—until you can feel him twitch and spill inside of you, and he turns his head against your hand and takes one of your fingers between his teeth, a delicate bite, and groans around it, eyes squeezed shut, tight with ecstasy.

When it has passed, he gives one final shudder, releases the knuckle he’d held so tenderly between his teeth with a parting kiss before he looks up into your face. Mismatched eyes, he looks so beautiful—he always has, you know that, now—and he leans close, pressing the tip of his nose against yours.

“I love you,” he breathes, voice hoarse from use. “I have loved—did love—and I should have told you, then, before it was too late. Shouldn’t have been such a coward—”

“No,” you reply, shaking your head. “You are no coward, Julian. You have proven that much, at least.”

He has faced his own death, not knowing what the consequences would be. For your sake—for the sake of the city, to stop the plague—he had been so very, very brave.

“And you’ll tell me now,” you add, with a smile. “And I will tell you, as I should have. Every day.”

“And every night?” he asks, and you can feel (rather than see) his lips twist into a suggestive grin, pressed as they are against your cheek.

You grin in return, so pleased: a future before you full of affections, declarations, and love. The two of you have so much time to make up for—you will not waste a minute of it.

“Yes, Julian. And every night.”

**Author's Note:**

> ayyyy come yell @ me on tumblr: 4biddenleeches


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